[29] Moderation was the keynote of Jesus' character. Excess in any direction was contrary to His principles. He had no sympathy with either the zealot or the ascetic. He condemned as well the faster and the prohibitionist as the glutton and the wine-bibber. He was most democratic in His daily intercourse with others. He dined one day with publicans and sinners, and the next with a Pharisee, notwithstanding His bitter antagonism to the Pharisees as a sect (Luke XI:37; XIV:1). This moderation shows itself in the charity of His judgments of others, as in the case of the woman taken in adultery (John VIII:3-11), the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke XV:11). "Judge not that ye be not judged" (Matt. VII:1) and elsewhere. When He is asked to name the first great commandment, He does not choose any of the ten stringent provisions of the Old Testament, but expresses His ideas in the milder forms: To love God, and to love thy neighbor as thyself (Matt. XXII:36-40; Mark XII:28-31). [30] The prophets of the Old Testament had long before the birth of Jesus inveighed against the disposition among the Jews to magnify _acts of worship_--religious rites and ceremonies--as pleasing to God and indicative of holiness in the participant. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?--saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats." "Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and _Sabbaths_, the calling of assemblies; I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even _the solemn meeting_. Your new moons and your _appointed feasts_ my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them." "Learn to _do well_; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah I:11-17). "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, _the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul_? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God" (Micah VI:7, 8). "For I desired mercy and not _sacrifice_; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea VI:6).